Blizzards may be tolerable to a point, but to a fertility patient who’s in the midst of a treatment cycle, the kind of slow-down’s inherent in bad weather can toss an otherwise perfectly timed effort at conceiving into an anxious tailspin.
At Shady Grove Fertility, the thought of closing down due some snow and wind was not an option. Open nearly every day of the year, the plans to keep the Center running smoothly, and patients on their cycles, began as soon as reports of the impending storms began days earlier.
“From February 6th, the beginning of first blizzard, through the 11th, when the second blizzard ended, our team of doctors, nurses, embryologist and patient service staff members kept over 1,800 patients on track in their cycle,” SGFC nurse Karen Calabrese said.
A hotel within walking distance of the Rockville office became the site for staff and patients alike to hunker down. Arrangements were made for food from local eateries to be delivered. The group of about 30 Shady Grove Fertility staff, and later a handful of patients who’d arrived for egg retrieval appointments, kept their spirits up by playing cards and board games. Once several feet of snow from the first storm had paralyzed the city as expected, the center’s staff had only a couple of blocks to walk or drive to meet patients at the Shady Grove Fertility facility.
Keeping Patients on Track
Timing is a crucial issue in fertility treatment, from scheduling medications around a woman’s ovulatory cycle to the more advanced procedures of IVF. While many patients were rescheduled for the days leading up to and after the major snowfall, patients who were nearing the end or at the end of their IVF cycle had little chance of postponing their egg retrievals.
“Morning treatment monitoring and embryo transfers can wait safely,” Calabrese explains, “but egg retrievals really must be performed within 36-hours of a patient giving their trigger shot. We were relieved that we had the resources on board to make sure our patients didn’t lose precious time during such a transportation-stopping storm.”
During the first leg of the storm, February 6 and 7, Shady Grove Fertility performed 32 egg retrievals, 27 embryo transfers and 21 IUIs while 14 egg retreivals, 16 embryo transfers and 7 IUIs took place during the second blast on February 10.
And it just wasn’t patients and staff that were affected by the wintery conditions. When Shady Grove Fertility’s Director of Embryology Jim Graham noticed that the lab’s out-take vent was being impeded by packing snow, he climbed on the building’s roof and cleared the snow from around the area thus protecting the lab’s most precious contents in the building, the growing embryos, from abrupt environment changes.
Patients Persevering Through the Conditions
While most fertility patients have a unique story to their fertility journey that they will always remember, the patients that were involved in the Blizzards of 2010 will never forget the length’s they went to in order to build their family.
“One patient was experiencing muscular pain from having to move a fallen tree from their driveway, with her husband’s help, so they could get in to their appointment with us,” says Calabrese.
A falling tree may have been an easier roadblock for UK patients Dave and Cindy than what they endured to make their appointment. Their journey spanned two countries, five states and countless setbacks that could have diminished anyone’s hope.
Their journey began on Tuesday by learning that their flight from Heathrow to Washington’s Dulles Airport had been cancelled due to the second storm arriving in the area Tuesday morning. After working with the ticketing representatives, the couple were able to change their flight plans to try and fly into the closest airport that was not being affected by the major storm. This meant that they would rebook to fly to Chicago then onto Charleston, South Carolina. They hoped that once they landed at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport they would be greeted with the good news that Dulles reopened or that they would be able to fly into another Washington area airport.
The couple’s hopes of flying into anywhere other than Charleston, which they were already ticketed for, was dashed once they landed at O’Hare.
“Chicago was chaotic, no one seemed to know which airports were open and which were not,” said Dave. He added, “We had the choice of staying on the Charleston flight or going on stand-by to a closer location – with no guarantee that the flight would go ahead and the chance that we could loose our luggage for several days if we checked it in and the flight got canceled. So Charleston it was.”
Nervous about whether they would be able to make their transfer appointment, they couple turned to modern technology to help them find out when they needed to be in Rockville for their appointment – but that failed them.
“We needed to make some calls only to discover both our mobiles, although set for roaming, would not make outgoing calls,” said Dave. After decoded the instructions on the airport pay phones and worked out that the credit card reader we managed to make the all important call to Shady Grove. Our call was returned with the good news that our transfer was scheduled for Friday. This was a massive relief as we had thought that we would need to be in Washington by Wednesday morning.”
With the relief that they had two days to get to Shady Grove Fertility, the couple boarded the flight to Charleston.
Once the couple landed in Charleston they checked the weather report to see whether they would be able to fly into the DC region. With the storm still pounding the area and no guarantee that they would be able to get a flight into the region anytime soon, the couple rented a car with the intention to drive 9 hours up to Richmond, Virginia, spend the night and continue their drive to Rockville the next day.
Feeling that they were making good time on their drive to Richmond, the UK couple decided to stay on Interstate 95 and continue driving another hour to Fredericksburg, Virginia where they would stop and rest. When they heard that there was the possibility of another storm blanketing the area in the morning, they decided to continue their journey another hour to Dulles Airport, their original destination, where they would drop off their rental car and pick up the car they reserved for when they arrived.
Dave describes his drive into the snow covered region. “As we started east on the Interstate 495 at about 9 pm there was compacted snow on the highway. The road conditions varied from treacherous to easily passable and most of the traffic that we had seen further down 95 had disappeared. We were in a small convoy with four other vehicles. By this time there was medium snowfall and the water was freezing on the windshield so we had to keep the heat and de-mister on full.”
Approaching a day into their journey, they arrived at Dulles to pick up their car only to find out that not even Mother Nature can alter car rental booking rules.
“We got to an eerily quiet Dulles at about 10 pm to find that our original rental car booking had been canceled as we were seven hours over their late arrival limit,” Dave said. “The staff, although helpful were unable to re-activate our initial contract, but were able to rent us a car for more than three times the original price – if we wanted.”
With limited choices and exhaustion setting in, the couple decided to rent a car while the details of a new reservation were being sorted out. Dave and Cindy left the airport around 1 am and began their 45 minute drive to Maryland.
Dave recalls, “The journey from Dulles to Rockville was remarkable by the fact that we did not see one other vehicle on the road for the whole trip which was good as by this time the road was mainly a sheet of ice that we skated down the middle of!”
The couple arrived safely in Rockville, checked into a hotel and went to sleep around 3 am. The next day, the couple awoke to see the remnants of the storms path and reflect on the journey they had just been on to insure they would arrive in time for their transfer.
“In daylight we could appreciate the magnitude of the storm,” said Dave. “To put it in context, in the middle of January, England had approximately 4 inches of snow fall over a period of 24 hours. The nearly two feet that fell in Maryland was enough to bring most of the country to a standstill for several days.”
Friday morning, Dave and Cindy got up and arrived at Shady Grove Fertility for their transfer. While their trip took many twist and turn, the couple was grateful for being able to communication with the staff of Shady Grove Fertility along their snow bound journey.
“To all the staff at Shady Grove for keeping the operation going, a huge thank you for making our trip worthwhile. Your efforts meant our transfer went ahead as planned.”
